Beverly Center

A broken sprinkler main on the seventh floor of the Beverly Center shopping mall at La Cienega and Beverly boulevards caused minor damage in seven stores Thursday, fire officials said. Fire crews responding to a 1:10 p.m. call found water gushing from a sprinkler main that apparently had been damaged in a construction accident. The water flowed or dripped into three stores on the seventh floor and four shops on the sixth.

The Beverly Center said it will begin a major face lift--including the addition of a rooftop terrace--this month as shopping malls across the Westside of Los Angeles undergo a wave of remodeling to woo affluent consumers and compete against new rivals. Renovations have also begun or are planned for the Westside Pavilion near Westwood and Santa Monica Place, both owned by Santa Monica-based Macerich Co.

A man who shot and killed an up-and-coming rapper at the Beverly Center last year was acquitted of murder Friday in a case that focused in part on the victim's violence-laced gangsta rap lyrics. Aubrey Berry, 24, was hugged by his defense attorney as the last of the not guilty verdicts was read in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom. Friends and family of rapper Dolla, whose real name was Roderick Anthony Burton II, wailed and sobbed in the audience. "Obviously, what happened on May 18, 2009, was a horrible tragedy for everyone," Superior Court Judge Michael E. Pastor told the lawyers in court.

Fire raged through a vacant two-story restaurant near the Beverly Center shopping mall for more than two hours late Monday afternoon, but no injuries were reported, Los Angeles fire officials said. About 45 firefighters battled the flames in the unoccupied structure at 358 S. La Cienega Blvd., which once was the Old Fish Shanty restaurant. The fire was reported at 3:42 p.m.

The plague of rats that hit the $100-million Beverly Center mall is over, Los Angeles County health officials announced Wednesday. After an all-out, five-week war on the rats by one of the country's top exterminating firms, county officials completed an exhaustive two-day examination Wednesday and found not a trace of live rats, said Charles H. McMullen, chief sanitarian of the county's Department of Health Services.

A horde of hungry rats apparently left homeless by nearby construction projects has invaded the $100-million Beverly Center, prompting managers of the upscale Westside shopping mall to sign an emergency contract to eradicate the pests. Los Angeles County health inspectors in the last two months have found rat droppings throughout the massive 900,000-square-foot structure at Beverly and La Cienega boulevards, home to some of the city's most fashionable shops and restaurants.

December 8, 1996 | KATE BRAVERMAN, Kate Braverman, whose short story "Pagan Night" won a 1995 Best American Short Story Award, is affiliated with Alfred University in western New York state

Now that I live in the Allegheny Mountains, a day's drive from Philadelphia or Boston, and snow often falls for seven consecutive months, I know what I miss most about Los Angeles. It's not sun setting over the bluffs of Santa Monica Bay in a sequence of 82-degree days framed by palms and hibiscus, air magenta and citrus. What I miss most is the Beverly Center. I watched the Beverly Center being built.

The Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to approve a 12-story condominium building near the Beverly Center that had drawn fire for months from neighborhood activists and a nearby hotel. The unanimous vote will allow MCLV Properties LLC to demolish 84 apartments at the corner of 3rd Street and Wetherly Drive in the Beverly Grove neighborhood and build a 95-unit residential building. Opponents had included the Burton Way Foundation, a nonprofit group focused on the neighborhood near Beverly Center, and Burton Way Hotels, the owners of the nearby Four Seasons Hotel.

The tony Beverly Center in Los Angeles today will welcome its newest tenant. But it isn't a hip clothier, chic restaurant or cutting-edge electronics outlet. It's a public-private tourism promotion office known as a California Welcome Center, where travelers can seek help in planning their excursions of the Golden State. It may not sound glamorous, but its potential economic impact may more than make up for its lack of glitter.

Cloudy weather seems to bring out the plaid in Southern Californians. On one recent overcast weekend, shirts in thick flannels and wool blends were out in force. Almost everyone wore them as cardigans, loose and unbuttoned, over a T. Other sightings: plain turtlenecks and tights sandwiching short tartan skirts, hats, high-tops and (out-of-sight) boxers.